This chapter considers the production and reception of The China Syndrome, a 1979 Hollywood film starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Douglas. Depicting an accident at a fictional nuclear ...
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This chapter considers the production and reception of The China Syndrome, a 1979 Hollywood film starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Douglas. Depicting an accident at a fictional nuclear power plant, the film sparked controversy even before opening night. The nuclear industry and conservative commentators lambasted its antinuclear message. Yet the film received some of its harshest criticism from leftist reviewers, who claimed that it failed to foster activist feelings and to imagine citizens playing any role in shaping the energy future. While questions about the blurring of fact and fiction shaped the initial reception of The China Syndrome, the notorious accident at a nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania—only twelve days after the movie’s release—made the intersection of film and reality even more salient and politically charged. The spectacle of mass culture merged with the spectacle of media coverage to make the movie’s premonition of nuclear meltdown into an oppositional vision. As the crisis at Three Mile Island seemed to imitate the film, The China Syndrome became a surprising tool of protest, a movie that circulated beyond the screen and outside the theater to popularize and advance the antinuclear movement.Less

Nuclear Meltdown I : The China Syndrome

Finis Dunaway

Published in print: 2015-03-01

This chapter considers the production and reception of The China Syndrome, a 1979 Hollywood film starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Douglas. Depicting an accident at a fictional nuclear power plant, the film sparked controversy even before opening night. The nuclear industry and conservative commentators lambasted its antinuclear message. Yet the film received some of its harshest criticism from leftist reviewers, who claimed that it failed to foster activist feelings and to imagine citizens playing any role in shaping the energy future. While questions about the blurring of fact and fiction shaped the initial reception of The China Syndrome, the notorious accident at a nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania—only twelve days after the movie’s release—made the intersection of film and reality even more salient and politically charged. The spectacle of mass culture merged with the spectacle of media coverage to make the movie’s premonition of nuclear meltdown into an oppositional vision. As the crisis at Three Mile Island seemed to imitate the film, The China Syndrome became a surprising tool of protest, a movie that circulated beyond the screen and outside the theater to popularize and advance the antinuclear movement.